


InSight OutSight

by Atalante



Category: Star Wars (Marvel Comics), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Atollon events, Depression, F/M, Post Malachor, Rebellion, Shara Bey is one of Hera's A-wing pilots, Steps into Shadow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-17 11:12:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8141744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atalante/pseuds/Atalante
Summary: Short pieces set in the gaps of "Steps into Shadow".Shara Bey is a character from the "Shattered Empire" comic mini series.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rabenmund](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Rabenmund).



It was hard not to look at him.

Shara Bey tried, and failed. She was distracted anyway, out in the long dusk of Atollon to do repairs on an A-Wing that didn’t need any. There had been a message from her father, and she had to think about it.

He needed her back. It was his bad leg again. No help or compensation from his boss. And, no doubt, it got worse after she had hinted that she found a new employer for her flight skills, someone she wouldn’t name. He suspected her to be with the Rebel fleet. In danger. So, now his leg hurt.

And yes, they suffered pretty bad casualties amongst the A-Wing pilots. Even the first loss on the ground, here on Atollon, had been an A-Wing pilot, as if they were cursed. Shally didn’t even have a tomb (much as if she had died in space), as there had been nothing left of her to bury.

So, yeah, Shara tried to find something to repair, failed, and still crouched beneath the seemingly lithe body of the star fighter.

It was hard not to look at him – but he didn’t notice anyway, did he? And she was alone out there, nobody would mind her staring. He had been a looker before … tall, handsome, a little bit mysterious. Shara didn’t know if he was the Captain’s boyfriend or husband. They had been a perfect couple though – the headstrong captain and the mysterious Jedi. Until he returned from a classified mission:

Commander Tano dead or at least missing in an action that was too classified for Shara to know. And the Jedi badly wounded.

The way he walked now, carefully, one hand outstretched, a little precariously. She saw him often, she never spoke to him. He was always alone.

Scuttlebutt had it they broke up. Nobody really knew if they had been a couple at all – perhaps they had never been, and now, he was simply of no use to Captain Syndulla – as a crew member?

No, if Hera was one thing, it was warm. Her voice could worm its way into your soul. She wouldn’t drop someone because he was damaged by war.

But it wasn’t the first time for Shara Bey to watch from afar, inspecting this or that on her A-Wing. She had seen him putting distance between everyone and himself, wandering around, sitting with his face turned outwards to the fence, yearning to leave and not knowing where to. Perhaps Hera had not dropped him. Perhaps he had made himself so heavy that he could only drop and not be caught again. This morning (Atollon’s days constisted mostly of long mornings and evenings, with short spans of full daylight or deep night in the middle, as the atmosphere prolonged dusk and dawn) she had seen both of them. Captain Syndulla had talked to him, but he didn’t even turn around, so she did – turned away from him again and left, after what seemed to have been two sentences but felt like a violent eternity.

Pain radiated from both of them like the warmth radiated from Atollon’s dusk into the night. Not physical pain, that was long gone, and his face had become peaceful and calm again. But Shara only knew the outside. He sat there, as if he still listened to the Captain’s voice, and she could see his breath rattling through his body.

He went away shortly after, taking one of the sensors with him. The spiders crowded around him, and Shara felt miserable, letting him walk away like this. He couldn’t even see the display of the power cell – what if it failed him and the sensor ran cold and left him to the spiders? But he was a grown man, right, and a Jedi, and he had a lightsaber, no matter if he was blind now or not. He could defend himself.

He stayed away for a long time, Shara realized as she stared at his return. The morning had passed, as well as the two hours of daylight, and dusk was on its way into the night as he reappeared, followed by the usual amount of blood-thirsty spiders who kept a safe distance to the...

Shara frowned. The sensor was gone. His left hand was still outstretched to find obstacles, but his right hand held the mask he usually wore to cover the raw scars across his face. The spiders followed him and klicked their horrible maws. But they left him unscathed.

He even turned around before he stepped beyond the barrier. His left hand stretched out further and _touched_ the spider. Shara gasped and her head met the underside of her A-Wing. _Klonk._

Kanan Jarrus put on his mask again. The unsettling bird of prey gaze of the mask’s eyes fell on Shara, but she was almost sure that he couldn’t see her. Shejust decided to say something, something like: “How did you do that?” or “Did you tame them?”, but in that very moment of decision, the comlink on her wrist signaled, and a heartbeat later Sato’s voice came through: “Phoenix Nest to Phoenix Hangar, Fire 3 and 4 and Phoenix Squad – emergency take-off to Yarma, I repeat emergency take-off to Yarma immediately.”

Shara got out from under her spacecraft. Jarrus went past her, still with careful steps, but faster now. She saw him find the entrance of the Ghost without doubt or hesitation. He just went aboard, as if it was the most natural things for a blind man to take his seat as a co-pilot.

Shara opened the cockpit, took the handholds and lifted herself up onto the A-Wing. She slid inside, her hands found the instruments blindly, her back met the seat that still radiated heat from Atollon’s warmer day. She sighed, as the cockpit closed.

Time to be up between the stars again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I need that Kanera-spacemarried-hug, okay? 
> 
> Interludes of Steps into Shadow - one in the Ghost, on the way to Yarma, another one after the talk between Kanan and Ezra.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It seems I wasn't done yet with Steps into Shadow. ;)

He sat still. The co-pilot seat had already become unfamiliar. Why was it so hard to sit and wait now, though he had done little else for the past months?

He tried to figure out if she was still smiling. He had heard the smile in her words (“It’s good to have you back” – so short and simple, yet so much hovered between words, and they were both not ready to speak it out aloud). There had been silence since. Now, the Ghost entered hyperspace and without the crew, the ship lay silent despite of its humming and throbbing engines.

“Are you looking at me?”, he said.

“I am”, Hera answered, and, yeah, the smile? Still there.

“I can’t look back”, he admitted.

“I know.” She hesitated, but went on: “Love.”

A wild, twisted, desperate delight wormed its way through his intestines. Half an hour of pep talk with an ancient Force wielder could not free him completely from his fear, his guilt, his shame. He knew the gnarling teeth of depression and they had munched on him too long. But this new feeling was something else. It was still fear – fear because there was no return, no way to restore the old status quo. Her calling him “love” seemed to reach out for him from a different life, a life in which he was not buried within his own darkness.

The time when he had been her co-pilot, her gunner, her field general was gone. The time when they had exchanged looks and teasing smiles.

The darkness dwelt on him like a shroud. He felt capable enough today to shrug it off, but it would return. It would never again fully leave him.

“I’m sorry”, he said. He heard a painful sound, a fake laughter, an exasperated smile – something like a combination of that, and he wished – again – he could see her face.

“Don’t be. It’s … it’s alright”, she whispered. “ _I’m_ sorry. I should have … I couldn’t really help you.”

He turned his head towards her. Words failed him and they fell silent again. He stretched out a hand, just a little bit, an invitation perhaps, a question, an offer. Something fragile.

She took it faster and harder than he had thought she would. Her fingers clenched his, she squeezed his hand so hard he almost flinched. He laughed instead, his fingers closed around her slender fingers and started to feel the details of her glove.

“You’re back”, she whispered.

“I’m back”, he said and was almost sure that she tried not to cry and failed. He leaned back into the seat, their hands clasped between them. The wild, twisted, desperate delight filled him to the brim. There was no turning back. There had never been. The future was moving and he had no idea what it was about to bring. But today he was feeling like he was up to it. Like he was ready.

***

They hadn’t really spoken since. Of course, they had _said_ things (mostly: “I see him”, “We’re inside, get going!” and so on), but they had not _spoken._

Hera stood besides the Ghost’s ramp and watched Kanan and Ezra talk. She didn’t get nearer, didn’t want to interrupt. She had suspended Ezra’s command and of course she still meant it (and the Phantom was still gone).

Ezra’s and Kanan’s talk was more urgent. Kanan had turned away from everyone, and that had shaken all of them. Perhaps Ezra the most.

Hera had felt his distance like a knife in her heart, but she was grown-up, capable and responsible of so much more now. A heart was something you could weep for at night. As long as you got enough sleep and got up for the meetings the next day. The Rebellion was everything she had ever fought for, and she had to go on, with Kanan or without him.

But Ezra had always been abandoned, and he reacted with fury and aggression and over-ambition to it. Perhaps everything would be better now.

Now that Kanan was back.

Or wasn’t he? Was it some Force notion of his, something that called to him, told him Ezra was in danger, and now that the young Jedi was safe again, he would turn away again, to dwell in a state everybody thought of as meditation and inner calm but she had long realized as depression and barely contained pain and loss. She shivered with thoughts. Her heart began to race as she saw him turn away from Ezra, saying a few words and walking towards the Ghost. Unsecure at first, turning his head left and right as if he was trying to figure out where exactly it was.

She wanted to call out to him but remained silent. He came back, step by step, one hand outstretched to find obstacles.

She remembered the day they realized he would stay that way. There had been hope at first, fierce hope – once the bacta had restored his eyes, she had waited for the day it would restore his optical nerves, the fragile balance of his sight, all the aspects the med droid had informed them about.

Then there had been another examination. “Your sight will not return.” She still heard the gentle droid voice inside of her skull. “If we’d be somewhere else, perhaps I could restore your sight with cybernetic implants and brain surgery. But I would need core world medical facilities. And every passing day diminishes the chance, as the brain reconfigures to accustom to the new circumstances.”

Kanan had only gotten up. It was the first time he didn’t put the bandage back on. He staggered out of the room, and she had called his name, and he had just said “Don’t!” in that dark and desperate voice, that opened her up like a knife. She had followed him, had seen him pick up a thumper and just leave the base, beyond the fence, as if he wanted to run and never turn around again.

She had let him go. She had cried, later, in her cabin. For him, for her, for what they had had together. For what was gone now.

He had returned, but since then he had been distant. And she had been, too, because the leader of Phoenix Squadron didn’t have the luxury to dwell on losses and wounds and broken hearts.

Hera pressed her lips shut. She would not betray her thoughts by making stupid, sad noises. And he couldn’t see her face anymore. He wouldn’t know.

He stopped and turned his head her way. Not as if their gazes met, but as if he was trying to catch a sound. She breathed and it came out like a sob.

Kanan made one last step, his hand touched her arm, and then she pulled herself into his hug. They literally crashed, one into the other – her back against the side of the Ghost, his legs against hers, his arms around her, entwining with her Lekku, her hands removing his mask, stroking his hair, his beard, the scar across his face. Her breasts against his chest, the warmth of their bodies mingling. And finally, their lips, noses, chins, breaths. A wordless longing. He couldn’t see if anyone watched, and she, for the first time ever, did not care.

They kissed for an eternity. Steps on the Ghost’s ramp told her that Ezra had gone inside. Finally, they broke apart, a mess of tears and smiles and relief.

She saw Shara, as always on her way to repair her flawless A-wing – or rather to think her own thoughts and digest her own problems. She shot a look across the dark landing field, flashed a small smile, hesitated – and gave her Captain a thumbs-up. Hera entwined her fingers with Kanan’s left hand and pulled him into the light of the ramp.

She returned the thumbs-up for the shortest blink of an eye before they went inside. Shara smiled.


End file.
